


Intermezzo

by Ylevihs



Series: How Not to Fall [22]
Category: Fallen Hero Series - Malin Rydén, Fallen Hero: Rebirth (Video Game)
Genre: Elevators, Gen, Minor OC - Freeform, Retribution Spoilers, political corruption, poorly done banter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-27
Updated: 2019-07-27
Packaged: 2020-07-23 00:16:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20000842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ylevihs/pseuds/Ylevihs
Summary: An interview of sorts





	Intermezzo

She was late. Which wasn’t so much annoying as it was a mild let down—any much longer and his legs were going to cramp up. It smelled of damp concrete, which he did not want to think about because it had been two weeks since the last storm. High above him the minds of pigeons darted and skittered. He rolled his neck with a satisfying crack and tried not to look at the time again.

It was his own fault though, to be fair to her. His research stage had been brief, only a week of light surveillance. She got to the office at 8 am every morning, on Wednesday and Friday had gone to lunch out with contacts, and left work, alone, sometime between 5:15 and 5:30 pm every day. She frequently left the office during the day but always returned to the same parking space. She parked her bike on the seventh level of the parking structure, almost the top. And she favored taking the elevators over the stairs.

It was getting close to 5:45 by the time the elevator doors dinged open. He didn’t even need to scan the box to see that yes, it was her, and that, yes, she was alone. She pressed the button for the seventh level and leaned her shoulder on the graffiti covered wall towards the front of the car. Apparently it had been a long day.

Inches from Richard’s head, cables sprung to life and began the slow process of lifting the car. It had to be one of the slowest elevators in the world, which suited him just fine. The Rat King tittered lightly in one of the warmer alcoves of his head. Richard directed them towards making sure she didn’t scream.

Wouldn’t pull out the weapon in her purse—he hadn’t been able to decipher exactly what it was—and shoot. The armor wasn’t built to take direct shots at such close range.   
As floor three slowly crept by, Richard peeled up the trap door in the ceiling and felt the Rat King’s influence helping soothe her thoughts into believing it was just another sound from the ancient mechanics. He dropped into the car and she had just enough time to register the sound and turn before one gloved hand was up against her mouth. The other pressed the emergency stop. A brief bell that fizzled out—this place was falling apart. 

She stiffened, mind racing between who this could be and why and. Oh? Recognition. Settling. 

Settling?

That wasn’t him doing that. That was all on her own. It shouldn’t have surprised him, Miss Ochoa had always proven to have quite the impressive streak of courage. She recognized him and Richard could feel himself rather alarmingly being slotted into a neat little category that read ‘not an immediate threat’. That.

Well, that was.

She wasn’t entirely wrong, but still. 

After a moment Mad Dog pulled his hand back. 

“Good evening Miss Ochoa,” his voice rumbled in the distorter. Ochoa rolled her mouth as though she’d tasted something foul and made a face which quickly corrected itself. She was already reaching back into her bag, not for her—oh, a pistol, good to know—but for her notebook. “You’re a hard woman to get a hold of,” the notebook was located and now the hunt was on for a pen. 

There was a light, background note of fear. She wasn’t an idiot, after all, but there also was a distinct lack of panic. 

“We could always schedule a real interview,” the edge of excitement caught between her teeth.

“And miss the chance for a mysterious rendezvous between intrepid reporter and masked villain?” Mad Dog put a melodramatic hand over his heart. “You wound me,” a beat of silence. She thought he was mocking her. “I’ll have my people call your people,”

“You have people?” the pen was already—“What sort of networking does,” 

“Miss Ochoa, I _did_ stop you here tonight for a reason,” the pen paused. Her thoughts paused. It reminded Richard of watching a house cat tensing up to pounce. Right. 

“Two weeks ago a Senator from Virginia visited our cozy little hometown and your readers might want to know why,”

“The Sena…Senator Carmichael?” the pen was quick and she used shorthand. Her brain was quicker, examining every angle she could possibly imagine. Holding up his tidbit of information like jeweler inspecting a suspect diamond. Why come to her with this? Why come to her, specifically. And why this? What did it benefit him? Did he have connections to the Senator? A synapse sparked to life. Other connections? Mad Dog had cultivated a bit of reputation for dragging skeletons out of closets. Dragging names through mud. Corruption in politics was nothing new, and it would never get old, but he had done enough to color her thoughts impressed. “Okay I’ll bite, why was she here?”

“To meet with some people very important to her re-election campaign,” Richard offered, feeling a bit of the tension in the elevator car. He had to be careful to give just enough information to get Ochoa interested. Not enough to get her killed. Ochoa was good. She was smart and just the right sort of reckless and she was both wasting her talents at LD Confidential and using it as a cover to write some provocative pieces without getting the people in charge too hot and bothered. 

“Financiers?” she pressed. A dollar sign and a question mark. 

Richard hesitated against his own volition. It was close enough, he supposed. “In a way,” close enough that when she found what he wanted her to, she could make the connections herself. 

“Dirty money?”

“Hard to get dirtier than blood,” 

“That’s a big accusation,” but neither her thoughts nor her voiced echoed the sentiment. Instead the twisty turning lines of thought in her head were tangling and smoothing and entangling again. Connections and hubs and frustrating loose ends. Knots of thread from hundreds of different spools, working to make chaos into a tapestry. 

“The check for her last campaign ran to the tune of 10 million dollars,” most of it from her husband, Eric Carmichael. Board member for Permatelum Incorporated, leaders in the field of innovative and creative ways to make a lot of people very dead very quickly. And while it was easy enough to sell guns during peacetime to a paranoid population, the fancy toys Permatelum came up with sold best en masse to a more distinguishing type of clientele. The type of clientele that benefited most from war time government contracts and looking the other way. 

And oh dear, wasn’t Senator Carmichael the vicious little war-hawk on the Senate floor? Almost like her pocket book depended on it. 

“That’s a big check,” Ochoa conceded. Her pen was a blur. What, did she have mods in her fingers to help her write faster? “Where did they meet?”

“The Grand on 7th,” an easy offering. 

The address appeared in her notebook with a flourish. “And why do you think people will want to hear this story?”

“They’ll want to hear about the price tag, of course,” even if they weren’t the ones footing the bill, people who had to worry about their electricity getting cut every other month tended to get and nice and riled when bribes started adding up into seven digit territory. “And where the money is coming from. And where it’s headed towards,” there were precious few bleeding hearts in Los Diablos—but there were also quite a large contingent of people who were quite alright with the state of the world getting slightly less volatile. 

Ochoa seemed to roll that around in her head a little bit, getting a feel for the edges and corners. The smooth planes that she could bounce an appealing story off of. “Maybe,” and then something snagged and she grinned. “They might be more interested in the other story about her time here in Los Diablos,”

It was bait but the trap was harmless. “Perhaps,” Richard shrugged, the movement exaggerated in his armor. Senator Carmichael had been saved by Lady Argent during a late night encounter with Mad Dog. Not much else to say that hadn’t already been covered by the rest of the paparazzi. 

“She was talking to a fellow reporter about her harrowing brush with a brutish and mysterious stranger,” her smile widened a molar or two, eyebrows lifting. Richard’s mind did a rather complicated two step dance around whatever it was Ochoa was pushing at him. The tone of the conversation was shifting and he wasn’t quite sure what he was supposed to do with it. “She found it all very…,” Ochoa trailed. A vague and slightly uneasy memory cleared its throat at him. 

“Oh,” was all he could think to say. And then part of his mouth caught up with what she was talking about. “ _Brutish_?”

“Apparently she was literally swept off her feet by the, and I quote, ruffian,” she was clearly going to continue when the gentle skitter of the Rat King itched between Richard’s temples. Someone was in the parking garage. More than one someone, two minds. Two minds that were closing in with a purpose on the elevator. Two minds with. With?

“The _police_?” how could she have?

“What?” Ochoa frowned at him, mind working to catch up. It did so with the same speed as a jet engine. “Oh. Did,” and one of the threads of thought caught and wound around the emergency stop button. That he had pressed. “You did,”

“What sort of emergency stop calls the cops?” even with the modulator it came out as a hiss, which Richard couldn’t be bothered to care about. Ochoa gave him a very pointed look which communicated that their current situation, one with a single woman trapped in an elevator by a man with a less than stellar regard for the law, was exactly why an emergency stop button called the police. 

What kind of fresh--.

It didn’t matter. Ochoa could deal with the fuzz. Richard took a step back and looked upwards, through the hatch. If he angled it correctly he could get his grappling hook up at the. Ochoa was just as quick. 

“We’re not done here,” she took a step towards him. Not much space in the car anyways and her thoughts made the interesting note that his height wasn’t an illusion. 

“I am,” Richard unhooked the small gun from the rest of his armor with a brief pneumatic ‘shhf’. 

“The cops will confiscate this,” Ochoa wiggled her notebook at him as Richard took a step back to adjust his aim. “And then who knows how long it will take for me to do my research?” it wasn’t much of a bluff. But there was some truth to it. It came with a hint of a threat—she had a lot of other stories to work on, why not back burner this story until she got her notes back? He considered calling her on it. With the way her interest had spiked, it wasn’t going to be long before she’d circle back to this, notes or no. 

Someone knocked on the doors. A bored but loud voice. Even duller thoughts. “This is the LDPD, we can hear you in there. Do you need emergency medical services?”

“No,” Ochoa shouted back. Her attention swiveled back to him. “Come _on_ ,” a harsh stage whisper. 

“We’re going to open the doors, remain calm and step away from the front of the car,” bored but authoritative. Annoyed that this was an hour into their shift and they had to deal with some jackass stuck in an elevator in a shitty parking garage and. 

“They’re gonna open the doors, Mister Mad Dog,” pressing harder, teeth gritted. She really didn’t want to have to deal with them. There was. Oh? Something else in that notebook of hers that wanted to keep out of sight. 

“Please, Miss Ochoa, Mister Mad Dog was my father. And she’s gonna write you a ticket,” Richard said, letting the amusement in his voice show. He fired the grappling gun and felt the satisfying reverb all the way down his arm. “For wasting police time and resources,” Ochoa scowled. Richard nudged at the knot of threads and oh ho? The right sort of reckless indeed. What wouldn’t Ortega give to get his hands on that?

So. It wouldn’t hurt to keep her good opinion, after all. He sighed and gestured for her to come in closer. The metal doors shuddered slightly. The top of Ochoa’s head barely came to the center of his chest. She didn’t hesitate wrapping her arms around him and holding tight to the grooves in the armor. Richard wrapped his free arm securely under her shoulders. Tried not to press her too firm against the harder edges. 

“Going up?” The elevator doors slid open and Ochoa swore. The police officers swore. Richard activated the grappling gun and muttered, “Aw, beans,” before gravity tugged hard at both of them and they were pulled up through the ceiling of the elevator car.


End file.
